


Magic Trick

by nirejseki



Category: Constantine (TV), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Dragons, Eldritch, Fix-It, Gen, In Which I Write The Premise of a Young Adult Fantasy Novel, M/M, Magical Realism, Sorcerer Supreme, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 01:24:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13089504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: "Do you wanna see a magic trick?" Len asks."Seriously, Snart?" Barry shoots back, clearly annoyed. "We've been captured by an army of - and I still can't believe I'm saying this - super-intelligent ninja human-dinosaur hybrids in the middle of a rescue mission to save Iris and Mick, and you want to show me amagic trick?!"(in which Leonard Snart may be the Sorcerer Supreme, charged with protecting the world from horrors that would destroy it, but he hasn't lost his sense of humor)





	Magic Trick

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: Coldwave Fic Prompt: Len is, very reluctantly, the DC-verse equivalent of the Sorcerer Supreme. Meaning he is a VERY powerful magic-user, who - tends to ignore magic as hard as he can, for the most part. (Based on that GIF set of Len snapping off handcuffs and sarcastically calling it 'magic').
> 
> A/N: I'm 100% unfamiliar with Dr. Strange or the Sorcerer Supreme mythos, although I once saw the Dr. Strange trailer a few months ago (and I still don't know what that movie was about). Long story short: do not expect any accurate Sorcerer Supreme canon here.

"Do you wanna see a magic trick?" Len asks.

" _Seriously_ , Snart?" Barry shoots back, clearly annoyed. "We've been captured by an army of - and I still can't believe I'm saying this - super-intelligent ninja human-dinosaur hybrids in the middle of a rescue mission to save Iris and Mick, and you want to show me a _magic trick_?!"

"Dead serious," Len assures him, even though he agrees that the entire situation is rather ridiculous. "And they're not ninja dinosaurs. They're pirate dinosaurs. They're acting like pirates."

"The costuming is clearly more ninja inspired - you know what? No. We're not having this argument. Not again. Five times was more than enough!" Barry pauses. "Wait, what were we talking about?"

"Do you want to see a magic trick?" Len asks, very patiently. 

Barry stares at him incredulously, and then that innate sense of humor, that sense of the ridiculous that lets him keep going, that lets him have hope in every situation, takes over. That's why Len likes him so much. 

"You know what," Barry says, shaking his head. "Sure. Go ahead. Show me a magic trick."

Len smiles. 

He'd hoped Barry would say that.

* * *

"Do you want to see a magic trick?" the dying man says. 

There's no one else around, so he must be talking to Len; Len, who was hiding in the trash behind the building in the alleyway because his dad would find him otherwise. He's really well hidden, though, so he doesn't know how the dying man - and he is dying, badly, his eyes and ears and nose and mouth all bleeding - knows that he's there. 

"I can see your aura," the man says. "I know you're there. I know that you're as hard and cold as ice on the outside, but I can see -" Here he coughs wetly. "- I can see the gold of you on the inside. You're a good man, deep down."

Len doesn't respond. 

"It wouldn't be my first option, you know," the man says. "Giving this to a stranger. But the man I chose as my apprentice - he became corrupted by it. By the power of it. When we first met, his aura was so pure, like you wouldn't believe - though I guess that was part of the problem - I know to look to the core, now, beyond the surface -"

He coughs again. 

He's dying.

Len's mom died. Len knows what it sounds like. 

"My apprentice did this to me," he says. He sounds - not sad, not really. Resigned. "He was convinced to by the Others."

The way he says Others sounds pretty ominous. 

"Before he could finish me off, I locked away everything he had," the man says. "Cut him off. But he'll figure out a way to get it back, and then we're all going to suffer. He's angry. Always angry, and when he gets back, he's only going to be more angry. He's going to hurt people."

Len swallows. That sounds like his dad. He'd always been angry, shouting and throwing things and grabbing hard enough to hurt, but when he'd come back from prison he'd been so much more angry. 

Things hurt so much more now.

If someone who could kill like this man was dying was that angry...

"If I don't give it to someone, he'll get it," the man says. "And people will be hurt. Please."

Len doesn't want to, he's never wanted anything that might make him more of a target, but he can't let someone like his dad get power. He doesn't care what type of power this guy's talking about - whether it's politics, or Family, or even just a really powerful gun - he just knows that it can't be allowed. 

He climbs out of the trash.

"You're just a boy," the man says, sounding disappointed.

Len's used to being disappointing. He just stands there and lets the guy make up his mind. 

"I guess I don't have a choice," the guy sighs. "I don't got long left. Not long enough to take the time to be picky - and you're gold on the inside. At least, you are now. Gotta hope for the best. You read a lot of fantasy, kid?"

Fantasy? 

"No," Len says honestly. "I don't really got time to read."

He has to steal to keep his dad happy, and he's got to feed and care for Lisa, and he's got to go to school and do just enough of the homework there that the state doesn't come asking any more questions than they already do about the boy who's in the hospital so much that his dad has started refusing to take him even when it really, really hurts.

"Shit," the man says, rubbing at his face. "Well, I asked for a worthy successor, and the power brought me here, to you, so I guess I'm just going to have to trust it."

Len has no idea what the man is talking about. Only that the blood is flowing freer now, from his mouth and his eyes and his ears and his nose. If he keeps bleeding like this, he won't have any left on his insides.

That may, Len thinks warily, be the point of it.

What a terrible way to die. 

"At least it's unexpected," the man muses, more to himself than to Len. "They won't know to look for a child. All right. I'll do it." He looks at Len. "You're ready for this?"

No, Len's not ready. Not at all. But he can't let men like his dad win. He can't. 

He nods.

"So, kid," the man says, and he coughs, long and low and deep, and his voice is kinda weird when he continues, "you wanna see a magic trick?"

Len says yes.

* * *

"Do you want to see a magic trick?" Len asks the boy who'd rescued him. 

The boy - Mick Rory, the guards said his name was - just grunts. 

There was no way he'd known that the other boys had been seduced by the Others to kill Len, lured in by glittering promises that hid the darkness behind; the Others, trapped in their alternate universe or whatever the pocket that kept them far away was, were only able to reach out in little ways, whispers, promises and lies. They wanted Len to die because then his power would leave him and go to the next best person if Len didn't name a successor while he was alive, and then they might be able to convince someone to open the door for them at last. 

That's what they wanted: to get out of that pocket of darkness that they're trapped in, to come into the world of light - and then to devour it, piece by piece. 

They'd tried the whispers and the promises on Len first, of course. The voices slithering over him at night, kind and gentle, sad and pathetic, old and wise; they offered him fortune and fame, the love of women and men, power beyond his wildest dreams.

They offered him revenge against the man who hurt him.

Len doesn't say no to them because he's the one that nameless dying man chose to save the world, like the chosen ones in those fantasy books he checked out in the library afterwards to try to figure everything out. That wasn't the reason at all.

He says no because he just doesn't dream that big. 

Len doesn't want power. He doesn't want more responsibility than he's already got. He doesn't want any more of any of it.

But he doesn't want to give what he's got away, either. 

It's _Len's_ power now. 

No one else's. 

So what if he doesn't use it for anything big, saving the world by stopping some undefinable bad guy?

So what if he only uses it for stupid stuff, like making Lisa smile, or using the portal to walk between worlds just to get away before the cops catch him?

Not that it works that way every time, if he wants to keep his power secret from his dad. He has to keep it a secret, because the only reason the Others haven't been able to get his dad on their side is because his dad just ever can't believe Len would ever have any power. 

That's why he got caught on that last job. That's why he's in juvie, just after nearly getting shivved by Others-inspired kids. 

Len hadn't realized they'd been taken in by the Others at first, either. He'd feared discovery more than he'd feared the kids, so he hadn't fought back with everything he had - a mistake. He hadn't realized how serious the murder attempt was until it was very nearly too late. 

Mick jumped in and saved him. He didn't have to - there was nothing in it for him except trouble - but he did it anyway. 

Mick's a good kid. 

Len doesn't care about the rumors that run through juvie, the rumors that say Mick's a pyro and an arsonist and that he burned his whole family down. He's pretty sure it's all true, and he doesn't care.

Mick saved him when he didn't have to. 

That's enough for Len. 

He's recovering in the bottom bunk; he'd been paired up with Mick after it all, because the guards didn't want someone to try to stab him again and Mick at least had helped, not hurt. Len could've told them that any of the six who'd attacked him weren't likely to try again - when the shiv had scraped Len's side, drawing blood, the Others had come to watch, unable to stop themselves, pulling themselves as close as they could to the world of light, eyes avid and greedy, and the kids had gotten a glimpse of what the Others that'd made such promises to them _really_ looked like.

They weren't going to fall for those promises again anytime soon. Even if it was only because their sleep would be too full of nightmares for the sweet words of the Others to penetrate. 

Len's not going to say anything, though. He'd rather have Mick. 

Mick. Mick's an interesting question. Len's been here, recovering, for a few days now, and he knows the Others whispered all sorts of promises to Mick, all in exchange for him just popping down and smothering Len in his sleep - easy for a big boy like Mick, strong and sneaky - Len knows they're trying it, because Len can _hear_ them, the stupid fucks, he knows what they're planning and they know that he knows and they don't even care that he knows because he wouldn't be able to stop Mick anyway - but it doesn't work. 

Mick rejected them all without even thinking about it twice.

Mick's a good guy.

Mick might even be safe.

( _like the dying man's apprentice was safe?_ )

Still, Len has to try. He can't do this alone anymore. 

So he asks, again, "Do you wanna see a magic trick?"

Mick sighs and pushes his head over the railing to look at Len. There's a strange, puzzled sort of fondness to his expression, like the kid that's been irritating him these last few days has actually somehow managed to grow on him; Len's not sure how, because he doesn't think he's ever made a good impression on anyone but Lisa, and she's just a dumb baby and easily tricked. 

"Sure, kid," he says, shaking his head, like he thinks he's humoring Len. "Show me a magic trick."

Len raises his hands, cupped together, to Mick, and summons flame for him - the essence of flame, the magic core of it that hides in every fire, and Len cuts through all the crap to produce the purest version of it he can find, a small flame flickering in his hands, safe and limited and, to a worshipper like Mick, everything.

After that, well, they're more or less inseparable.

* * *

"Do you want to see a magic trick?" Len asks Lisa, ten years old and sobbing, because for all of Len's powers, he can't fight his dad. Blood against blood - if every religion says it's wrong, it's gotta be wrong, right? 

But Lisa's bleeding from a broken bottle to her arm, and Len's bleeding from a hell of a lot more than that, and there's some Family men who are coming upstairs to, quote, "do as you like with 'em" because their dad has debts to pay and no means to pay them with.

At least he had shame enough to leave before anything happened.

( _are you sure you won't take our offer_ , an Other hisses in Len's ear, _we could save you - save her - we could hurt him like you've been hurt_ )

Lisa, though, wonderful Lisa, she just sniffs and nods. "Yeah, Lenny," she says. "Show me a magic trick."

And he takes her through the portal of worlds, the great old Doors that he imagined from a book series he'd read to Lisa a million times over the last few years, and he takes her to her favorite place - an elderly dragon's hoard, where he's collected all the gold he can find and more besides, where he loves it and cares for it but doesn't mind visitors since he's too fat to really care about defending it anymore as long as no one takes any away from him - and he lets her sit and laugh and play, and forget everything that's happened today. 

And he tells the dragon, "Watch her", and the dragon straightens up his massive body, the size of a train, and nods, taking the duty upon its shoulders, and then Len goes back and makes sure there aren't any Family men to cause problems anymore.

He's gotten good at covering his tracks when he does this - bullets not created from nothing, but summoned from the guns of an opposing Family; hairs and nails and blood plucked from other crime scenes; no evidence of his own presence there. 

Mick meets him outside when it's all over, bundling an exhausted Len into the back of his car and driving away.

"You gonna keep doing that?" Mick asks, looking at him through the rearview mirror. 

"Doing what?"

"Killing Family," Mick says. "You're good at it, and it's a decent thing to be good at doing."

Len shakes his head. "I don't want to be a superhero," he says, and means it. He has enough trouble with the monsters he already faces: the Others trying to fight their way into their world, the Witchhunters who are searching for anyone with a trace of the Gift, the Order of the Path that worships at the feet of the Sorcerer Supreme and is looking for their lost God - and which don't really feel like taking 'no' for an answer when he doesn't seem inclined to go with them back to their mountain fortress to let himself be worshipped the way they think is proper. And worst of all, out there, distantly, Len knows that _He_ is there, the dying man's apprentice, the corrupted one, the one who thinks that Len stole his inheritance when Len accepted the mantle of successorship in his place. He's looking for Len too, and when he finds him... "I just want to be a thief."

And that is both true and Len's greatest defense, because no one suspects the guy who's robbing ATMs of being the Sorcerer tasked with keeping the world safe from other-dimensional creatures. 

He's even been tossed in jail a few times, a sitting target unable to defend himself, and all his enemies walk straight on by. He's _felt_ them, searching, but they don't search Iron Heights.

They're looking for a hero, not a criminal.

"Where'd you leave Lisa?" Mick asks. "With old Snaketooth?"

"She always did like gold," Len says, vague enough to answer Mick's question without actually confirming her location in case some shifter's taken Mick's face again. 

Mick shakes his head. "Of course she does," he says, fond as ever. He doesn't stay by Len's side just for the flame anymore; he knows the dangers and the risks and everything that could go wrong - much of which already have, in one way or another, all but that final confrontation with Him - and he stays by Len's side anyway. 

There's a ring on Len's finger, now. A quiet promise, vows sworn while standing together in the heart of a star - a reminder of the _real_ reason Mick stays. 

Sometimes Len curses his misfortune. Other times, like when he looks at Mick and his heart feels so full of joy it could burst, he can't bring himself to. 

"Pigs incoming," Mick says, glancing out the window, frowning. "You got enough juice to make us incorporeal for a bit?"

"Sure," Len says. It's one of the easier tricks, actually - just shift everything you want to affect (here, a car and two men) a half-universe to the right, and suddenly you're as invisible as a ghost and able to walk or drive through walls just the same. 

"Great," Mick says, and grins. "Show me a magic trick, boss."

Len does.

* * *

"Do you want to see a magic trick?" Len asks the empty air. 

Empty, because he's alone. He doesn't like to be alone. Being alone means he has time to see all the awful horrors pushing up against the thin magic wall that protects the world from them, and time to see means time to think, and time to think makes him feel like he ought to be doing more to _stop_ them.

Never mind that he's the longest lived Sorcerer Supreme in over a century, or that the other practitioners of his craft tell him he's been remarkably successful at repelling the Others and to keep up the good work. 

Never mind the crippled old fortuneteller that he has tea and tequila with on every off-month's second Thursday, that everyone else rejects because of her history of crimes and Len rather likes for the same reason, who tells Len that it's his ability to be restrained and discreet about fighting that has helped him survive this long.

"Most of 'em, they're arrogant snots," old Madame Xanadu spat out in her creaky old voice, the last time they'd spoken. "I'd know better than most -" She'd been an apprentice to one, years ago, and she'd been corrupted, too, all unknowing, but with dreadful consequences. She hadn't gotten the power, in the end, but she'd broken the hold of the corruption that'd grabbed her. She was resigned to the fact that she didn't have it and she'd never have it and honestly she didn't want it anymore: what she'd lost to the corruption had been so much worse than anything she would have gotten out of it. "- and I tell you, the more you use, the more trouble you're in. Rescuing the world, pah! It's bad enough to try to keep it _intact_. Fix, fix, fix, that's what you ought to do."

"Sure, Nims," Len said, fond of her as ever, even though she kicks him under the table every time he calls her that. She likes to grumble that she told him her history to teach him a lesson, not to get a dumb nickname, to which Len liked to respond: why not both? "I'll be careful."

"You can never be too careful," she replied, her eyes mistier than usual, and that'd been his only warning to start stockpiling power, because the dying man's apprentice had found him at last and was coming to collect his inheritance. 

He'd made the worst sort of contracts, with Others and Witchhunters and deranged Path monks and even worse creatures besides, with those that pretended to be gods and those that might not have been pretending, and he'd pulled back everything he was, bursting through the bindings the dying man had put on him, and he'd come after Len.

They'd fought forever and a day.

It was the worst fight Len had ever been in, magic to magic, weapon to weapon, soul to soul. 

The apprentice didn't make stupid assumptions the way some of Len's other enemies did, didn't think Len was going to be foolish and heroic and dumb, and he'd thrown everything he had at Len. 

And Len? Len had thrown everything he had _back_. 

His love for Mick and Lisa against the apprentice's love for his master, however twisted that love had become.

The apprentice's pain against Len's own, the perception of a master's betrayal against the slow, dripping realization that Len's father never loved and never would love him the way fathers ought. 

The apprentice threw the captivity of his magic being bound against Len; Len threw back Iron Heights, that yawning pit of despair and blackness and lives cut off by society long before death took them away.

The apprentice summoned monsters. 

Len called upon his friends.

That old bastard Constantine was sober, for once, his eyes flashing as he cast spells and incantations with a fluency Len would never be able to achieve; his own enemies were supporting the other side. 

Madame Xanadu did what she could to rebalance her books, her blind eyes no impediment as she reached out hand and will to crush anything that skittered and crawled on a plane different from the one they stood in. 

Zatanna - Len still has no idea why Zatanna's there, after that whole awkward one-sided crush and rejection business. He thinks Constantine may have blackmailed her. The reason is immaterial, though: she's there. 

But it hadn't all just been magic and darkness. 

Len has friends well beyond the realm of magic, and he called upon them, too: Mick, his beloved right hand, and Lisa, of course, but others as well. The man with the knives he'd roomed with at Iron Heights, the mother with the dead eyes and the rifle that lived next door, the strangely friendly cannibal he'd met as a child: they all came to fight by his side, and never mind that they didn't entirely understand what they were fighting. 

Old Snaketooth the Dragon - he'd liked Mick's name so much, he'd taken it on as one of his own, taken it and treasured it with a dragon's jealous love - roused himself from his long-guarded hoard and came, the size of a train twice over, long and writhing and bellowing flame and poison gas both with equal ease, batting wing and tail, wielding sharp claw and sharper tooth. 

But there were more yet to come, more than even Len had realized.

Len's crews came for him, he who'd treated them fair and cared for them as long as they obeyed his rules, he who had rescued them when they'd gone astray and disciplined them and given them the wealth they desired without the fear of betrayal. 

Len's neighborhood came for him, he who'd protected them from the Families and paid their debts and told their kids with long-suffering grace to go to school despite everything. 

Len's _cities_ came for him.

Tears streamed down Len's face for the first time in years, when they came forth into the battle, and even the apprentice's jaw dropped open in surprise.

The Twins did not rouse themselves lightly. 

The Gems, they were called by those that loved them, and whether that was their rough-accented city dwellers' admiration of their finer qualities or a shortened nickname for the sleeping Gemini, no one yet living knows. 

They've always been there, ever changing but ever constant, growing and shrinking in size but their attraction eternal: a thousand names they've gone through, and a thousand more they'll go through before the end.

Central is the elder, Keystone the younger, and the great Cities of the Midwest Plains are as mighty as their fellows in the East and the West for all that they were less accustomed to battle. 

For the first time in a thousand years, they roused themselves, strengthened by the souls of their residents, of the thousands upon thousands of them that melted together by years and close proximity, and once they were roused, they came: the Cities came forth in all their splendor to do battle for their true-born son who'd always loved them best of all. 

Len hadn't even thought to call for them, but still they came.

Every person he'd put love into over his life, each one and everything: they all came. 

And so the battle was won, in the end.

The costs were terrible, the casualties great: Mick burned with starfire and left for dead, unconscious in the hospital bed not far away; Lisa angry and distant; the Dragon slain; the magic scattered. 

But they survived. 

The world survived.

Len buries his head in his hands and wonders if it was worth it. 

"Do you want to see a magic trick?" he whispers to himself. 

He doesn't know.

* * *

"Do you want to see a magic trick?" Len shouts, gleeful, as he wields his new weapon, a cold gun, the sister of Mick's heat gun. They're standing shoulder-to-shoulder again, just the way it ought to be.

"Even your best magic trick won't stop me from beating you!" the Flash calls back, superhero bravado unable to disguise how much he's enjoying their combat. 

This is fun.

He's going to have to bring Lisa in, if she can take time off from her duties as the Dragon's heir. Old Snaketooth had died knowing that his hoard would be cared for by one who loved it as much as he, and he had been well pleased. 

Mick laughs in glee and shoots a line of flame down the street that the Flash dances around in a crackle of lightning. 

Len smiles at his cities, who are watching their antics with the fond eyes of mothers gazing upon two favored children playing, and he summons a fire hydrant that was actually located a block away a few minutes before (not that anyone will notice but sanitation, and even that not for a few months - the indifference of government at its finest) and cracks it, the water spurting out all over the streets for him to ice just as the Flash goes by, his eyes going wide, his arms starting to pinwheel as his feet lose their grip.

The way the Flash falls on his ass and slides into a nearby wall is enough slapstick to make his cities (and his Mick) laugh in glee. 

"Better luck next time, Flash!" Len calls, pulling Mick and their loot away. They had a car prepped for a getaway.

Mick flicks on the radio, which they've set to the Flash's comm channel.

They drive away safe, listening to the Flash's helpless laughter at his well-earned and rather hilarious defeat. He's gotten into full-on hiccups by the end of it, his friends in no better state than him, and even Joe West, who tries to be serious, unable to keep from guffawing.

"And you know what the best part is?" Cisco Ramon asks, voice audible over the line even through the static and his giggles. "I have _video_."

Mick twists to look at Len in silent plea.

"Okay, fine," Len says, still grinning and high on adrenaline. "Our next heist can be to go get a copy of that."

Now _that_ was magic.

* * *

"Do you want to see a magic trick?" Len asks, his hands in the guts of the machine, Time Masters all around him.

Mick is gone away safe, Sara hoisting him onto her back and sealing her promise to keep Mick safe with a kiss for good luck. 

Len doesn't know if even his magic can survive the destruction of the Oculus, but he knows this: the Oculus has to go.

It's twisting time, hurting it, and each twist tears through that fragile boundary that protects the world just a little bit more. 

The Others are the gods here, their dreadful power come too close for human sanity to prevail; Len can see their madness shining in the eyes of the leaders of the Time Masters. He wonders what promises they made to tear these false monks from the path they swore to tread.

He wonders what promises could ever be worth the terrible damage these men have wrought upon themselves and others in the service of the Others. 

He doesn't, at this moment, much care, though.

They tore Mick from his side and tormented him; Len returned to him his sanity and his sense of self, but the scars in his mind remain, just as the scars of starfire burns remain on his shoulders despite Len restoring his mobility as best he could. It doesn't matter: they made Mick _suffer_.

The Time Masters have destroyed so much, killed so many, and yet Len is not too proud to say that those many deaths meant less to him than that injuries they did to the one he loves. 

He knows he may not survive this, this final explosion, this final battle. Before he made this choice, before he came to this crossroads, he stood with his hands held high and cast the name "Lisa" in the air, naming her his successor should he die - she deserves it more than anyone else, born and raised in the safety of his power and the risk of his love. The Dragon's heir knows the risk of what he does and will take on the duty that he has borne so long; she does not want it, no, but she will take it, and she will shine like a starburst of gold with it. 

He hopes Mick forgives him for dying.

"You bastard," one of the Time Master shouts, the only reply to Len's question. 

It's okay. 

Len wasn't really expecting an answer.

He lets the budding explosion he's been growing between his fingers go.

* * *

"Do you want to see a magic trick?" 

Len opens his eyes. 

"Thought I was the one who was supposed to say that now," he grumbles.

He recognizes the man who stands before him, even without the bleeding eyes and ears and mouth, even though it's been near on forty years since he last saw him. 

He never did get the man's name.

"Old habits die hard," the man says with a shrug. 

He's not alone. There's a figure behind him, massive and mammoth and serpentine -

" _Snaketooth_?!" Len exclaims. "What're you doing here?"

The man before him chokes. "You named one of the Great Wurms _Snaketooth_?!" he demands. 

"No," Len says, rolling his eyes. "My _husband_ did. Obviously."

"You have a -" the man pauses, then shakes his head ruefully. "On second thought, who am I to criticize? You've lasted so long and done so much; perhaps it was best, then, that you were never taught the old ways."

Len's gotten some idea of that already from Madam Xanadu, all about how he was supposed to forsake all friendships and romances for "their own good", as if they'd be any less of a target if he loved them from a distance.

Letting a disaffected blinded corrupted former student be one of Len's teachers would definitely not have been this man's preference if he'd lived, but hey - it worked out, didn't it?

"Am I dead?" Len asks. He thinks it's a reasonable question, given that the two in front of him are _definitely_ dead. 

Old Snaketooth laughs, and the world shakes when he does - a Great Wurm, one of the pillars of the rotten apple core of the world; he was so much more powerful than Len, young and bumbling, had ever known he was. 

"That," he lisps through his big front fangs, "is the magic trick."

* * *

Len's pretty happy, all told. He's gathered up all the most powerful of the Flash's villains (speedsters not invited) into the Rogues and disciplined them to follow his rules - no killing, no going after friends or family of the Flash, and keep your eyes on the prize; his cities rested safer, now, and were supplied with endless entertainment as they fought and helped the Flash in equal measure. 

He's gotten Mick back from the Waverider, and Lisa from her hoard (she's courting Cisco and some girl name Cynthia, which involves being around a lot), and even Barry's happy to see him.

So, yeah. 

A minor pirate-maybe-ninja invasion aside, Len's life is looking good.

"Well?" Barry says challengingly, smile curving his lips. "You gonna show me a magic trick or what?"

Len's smile widens.

"Just you wait," he tells Barry. "I'm going to blow your mind."

And then he shows him a magic trick.

Best one he knows.


End file.
